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Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Find Your Inner Yogi

School starting, kids flooding into classrooms. Leaves changing colors, a yellowish tinge in the air. Cooler mornings, later sunrises, earlier sunsets, harvest moons. September spells out the start of fall and the new school year, summer's last hoorah over Labor Day, and too many of summer's favorite activities winding to a close as winter looms closer. But on the fitness front, September does have one reason to celebrate all month long: it's National Yoga Month.

So while you're packing away those wetsuits, winterizing those boats, minimizing the bike and run miles, yoga's one activity that you may want to amp up the intensity on this month. With more than 1,200 yoga studios around the country participating in this month-long campaign to raise awareness about yoga's benefits and living a healthy and happy life, you'd be hard-pressed not to find a spot to roll out your mat and embrace a few asanas, sun salutations and vinyasas during a free week. Or if you can't make it to a site, it's just as easy to practice at home with a DVD (my personal fave is an Iron Yoga DVD I reviewed for Windy City Sports a few years back) or Yogis Anonymous, a Santa Monica studio that also provides on-demand and live class broadcasts online.

If you told me a year ago I'd be posting this Fit-Ink entry to kick off September, I would have shaken my head in disbelief. While I most certainly wouldn't hesitate to share the latest and greatest among fitness finds, you honestly wouldn't find me participating in those that had anything to do with yoga. That is, until about 11 months ago when I finally found a yoga I could identify with, boasting a studio that was too close to home to avoid, and a format where it didn't seem to matter that I couldn't stretch as far as other attendees or get the poses correct on the first, second or third try (yes, that's just how uncoordinated and unflexible I am). It's reasons like this that make months like Yoga Month worthwhile. And well, the money saved on the free classes across the country helps too. Time to get out and yoga--and watch for additional events happening this month!